For purists, there’s the venerable Rider-Waite deck from
U.S. Games (you can also get it super-sized). For many people, this deck, with
its heavy line art and bright, flat colors is the ultimate and only Tarot.

Prefer softer lines and more gentle color and texture? Try
the Universal Waite. Want aggressive background colors for the minors? The
Albano-Waite awaits. Want colors approximating the original four-color images
Waite himself might have used? Try the Original Rider-Waite. Want less detail,
murky color, and an odd copper border? The Golden Rider will make your day.

If you’re in need of a good read, the
Quick and Easy Tarot
shrinks the pictures, allowing the publisher to squeeze tiny divinatory
paragraphs into the borders. Shrink the mages even more, surround them with
obnoxious psychedelic patterns, and voilá: it's the
Diamond Tarot.

Send in the Clones

Then, of course, there are the so-called clones: decks
deliberately designed to emulate the RWS images to some degree. Llewellyn
distributes Lo Scarabeo’s Universal Tarot, which, as Lee A. Bursten notes,
offers a glimpse into a strange “alternate universe … in which A. E. Waite went
to Roberto de Angelis instead of [Pamela Colman Smith].” The
Tarot of the New
Vision, also from Lo Scarabeo, spins the RWS drawings around 180 degrees,
revealing what was “behind the camera” when the images were made.

Sick of borders? The
Morgan-Greer ditches the borders
entirely, allowing its autumn-toned, RWS-inspired artwork to dominate the cards.
The New Palladini offers jewel tones and groovy updates of Miss
Smith's art. A Dutch publisher offers Tarot in the Restored Order, which, apart
from two new cards and some re-numbering, is nothing more than an exuberantly
re-colored Rider-Waite Tarot.

The Halloween Tarot reinterprets the familiar RWS images in
terms of everyone’s favorite holiday. The
Tarot of the Cloisters not only
attempts to make the images appear to be created with stained glass…it prints
the images on cardboard beverage coasters. The
Royal Fez Moroccan deck (a good
argument against Mensa members becoming Tarot artists) looks like a Rider-Waite
deck redrawn in dull pencil and re-colored by someone whose supply of water
colors was running low.

And speaking of water colors: one the most elegant and
evocative RWS clones I’ve ever seen – Andreas Schroter’s
Aquatic Tarot – hasn’t
even been published yet. That’s a pity, because it puts many
commercially-available decks to shame.

In the end, dozens of decks, from the
Art Nouveau to Zolar’s Astrological Tarot, ape, copy, duplicate, or otherwise draw inspiration
from the Rider-Waite.

But Waite … There’s More!

Which brings us to the latest RWS-inspired deck: a “vibrant
re-coloring” of the Waite-Smith tarot cards sold as The Radiant Rider-Waite.

Identical in size to the standard Rider-Waite, but slimmer
and shorter than the Universal Waite, the Radiant Rider-Waite purports to be,
well, more radiant. Think Universal Waite with the hue and saturation
controls kicked up several notches, and you’ll get the idea.

For now, though, the yellow sky behind the Empress features
burning shades of orange and gold, and the wheat stalks at her feet blaze with
color. Watery purple pervades sky and stage on the Four of Coins. The
Queen of
Wands sits beneath a buoyant blue sky. The guy on the
Five of Swords appears to
be blushing about what must be a particularly uncomfortable case of razor burn.

In case that's not enough brilliance for your buck, the
central image on each card – usually a human figure – is always surrounded with
an aura of light. And, oddly, the colors on The Lovers and The Devil are so
punched up, the nude male figures -- how to say this delicately? -- no longer
display what nude male figures would normally display.

In addition to these color changes, the cards feature fat
white borders (à la Lo Scarabeo). To accommodate these, the images are slightly
smaller than those on the Rider-Waite or Universal Waite. Worse, the
illustrations also appear to have been slightly squished. As a result, the
Empress looks positively ferret-faced (especially
when compared to her plumper
sisters), the guy on the Seven of Coins appears anorexic, and the Queen of Wands
is more skinny than her cat for a change.

It’s also worth noting that character expressions seem to
have been softened and brightened, as though everyone in the deck – even the
stingy king on the Four of Coins – has been given a mild dose of Zoloft.

Is this deck an improvement over other versions of the RWS?
Is it a worthy addition to your collection? Should you rush right out and buy it
now?

Your answer to those questions likely depends on your
penchant for loud-colored clothing, your preference for people with bland
expressions, and your predilection for castrati.

While interested in the divinatory and meditative
applications of Tarot, Mark McElroy favors a more practical, less mystical
approach to the cards with “no focus on hocus pocus.” Mark is the author of
Putting the Tarot to Work, a book on visual brainstorming for business, and
Putting the Tarot to Bed, a brainstorming book focused on love, sex, and
relationships. Both books are due from Llewellyn Publications in 2004. His Idea
Deck, a Tarot developed specifically for use as a brainstorming tool, is also in
development. For more info, please visit
Mark's website.